1% percent of population gay, 69% Christian, according to Office for National Statistics
The article in the Mail says it all.
UPDATE: Courtesy of ThirstyGargoyle here is a link to the data in PDF format.
UPDATE II: British Religion in Numbers have now posted on this.
Tags: Religion Society
September 29th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
That’s a great article. I’m saving it. Thanks. Encouraging!
September 29th, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Perhaps it’s time the Conservatives wised up to this, and stopped greasing up to gay activists (who hate and despise them and will never vote for them anyhow) and took a bit more account of the wishes of the silent majority.
This figure for Christians is not dissimilar to that produced by the last census, and while none of us really think that 69% are practising Christians, from my own experience it shows that most people understand that the alternatives are far, far worse!
September 29th, 2011 at 6:43 pm
Updated with a link to the data:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_227150.pdf
September 30th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Not sure why this makes any real difference. Surely it’s about principles rather than numbers.
But let’s say that the real figure for homosexuals is 1% of the population. (The original survey actually says 1.5%). That means there are over 600,000 people in the UK alone who are homosexual. That’s a lot of people!
For comparison, there are less than 1% of the population confined to wheelchairs, and yet it is a requirement to provide wheelchair access to public and commercial buildings. I don’t think any of us would want to undo this legislation just because of the very small percentage of people who benefit. Numbers are not important.
I have to admit to being frustrated to find in a particular car park that I use that there are frequently no spaces, and yet the assigned disabled access spaces are invariably all empty. But I still would not change this. It’s the mark of a sophisticated, highly developed, tolerant and empathic society.
I think that the clamour currently heard from the homosexual lobby is as a result of many years of (sometimes vicious) prejudice and discrimination. Integrate them into society and the rumpus will disappear. And then we can get on with handling more pressing issues that blight humanity.
October 2nd, 2011 at 8:10 pm
I think you make some pertinent points, Simian – as you say, nobody makes official complaints about there being four or five disabled parking bays for less than 1% of the population.
If numbers are important (and I don’t think they are), we would have to look at the figures above. 69% of the population claim to be “christian” but only 15% attend church more than once a month, and the average age of a churgoer is 61 years old – so unless we recruit more young people that 15% will steadily fall!
Placing the statistics in opposition also could be seen to imply that gay rights and Christian rights are in opposition. This is not automatically true, what about those who are gay and Christian, or Christians who are supportive of gay rights- who perhaps have gay friends or children?
Also, which “rights” are we talking about? The right not to be physically or verbally attacked, or the right to be treated the same as any other citizen is different from the “right” to cause offence, or the “right” not to be offended – which are more trivial in my view!
October 29th, 2011 at 3:05 am
Funny how tabloids always manage to twist figures to suit their needs. The figures ‘actually said’ that 94% of respondents answered that they were heterosexual, which is very different than saying, “only 1% answered Gay or Lesbian.” You’ll see from the PDF above that 0.5% said Bisexual, 0.4% said Other, 3.7% said Don’t Know or refused to answer and 0.7% didn’t respond.
Bear in mind also that these figures were the result of a mixed doorstep and telephone survey and there would be many people who are not ‘out’ in public and wouldn’t dream of admitting their real sexuality to a stranger. I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable answering such a question to a researcher and I’m an openly gay man (and would therefore be one of the 3.7%). The reason is that prejudice DOES still exist despite the work of gay activists (conservative or otherwise) and one can never be sure that the person asking the question is who they say they are and not connected with, for example, a health insurance company. After all, it was this side of 10 years ago that gay men were not allowed life assurance and so found getting a mortgage difficult.
Frankly a straw poll would be more reliable than this ridiculously floored survey. So here’s a little experiment: Count the total number of friends you have on Facebook and then figure out the percentage of gay, lesbian, bi and trans friends that you know are Out as well as the one’s you suspect might also be LGBT. Bet you get more than 1% in total.
So please don’t be so quick to accept attention grabbing headlines as gospel. And for heaven’s sake don’t believe anthing you read in the Daily Mail. I’d have my doubts about the date in that rag.